Crown Royal has been dropping expressions left and right over the last few months, targeting both the ultra-approachable (a ready-to-drink black cherry whisky sour) and the luxe (a 31 year old, the oldest in its history). Somehow we got both, plus a new version of Crown Royal Reserve, which we last reviewed in 2008(!) and which now boasts a 12 year old age statement. Incidentally, Crown Royal just updated its main-line packaging, “the redesigned, slimmer bottles across the portfolio boasting a sleek and striking appearance.”
You know the drill — we don’t review new bottles, just new booze. So we’re going to drive into them all, starting with the biggest of the bunch.
Crown Royal 31 Years Old – Nothing you aren’t expecting here: This is a 31 year old blended Canadian whisky, the latest in the Crown Royal Higher Marques lineup (aka the Extra Rare Series, depending on where you look), which includes Crown Royal 30 Years Old and Crown Royal 29 Years Old (which we didn’t review). As was our experience with 2023’s 30-year-old release, this acquits itself just fine — just a bottle of Crown Royal, writ older. It noses with familiar notes of black pepper and over-toasted nuts, with a significant underbelly of wet asphalt and creosote. This whisky is old and it shows, with the sweeter overtones detected in the 30 year old absent this year. On the palate the austere whisky evokes flavors of peach pits, mixed nut husks, and grapefruit peel. It’s surprisingly bitter, not at all cloyingly sweet like the 30 year old, quite dusky and pungent with those aforementioned creosote elements building and building. It takes quite a while for the aggressive barrel-driven notes to simmer down, making room for some late-game hints of peach fruit and almond butter. The finish reins all of that back in, though, hitting you hard with notes of menthol and a significant, industrial reprise. It’s amazing how things can change in a year, but the number of barrels here must be dwindling, probably leading to a substantial variability in the years we have left. Either that, or we’re at the end of the road. 92 proof. B- / $599 [BUY IT NOW FROM FROOTBAT]
Crown Royal Reserve 12 Years Old (2024) – As mentioned above, this is an update to the old Crown Royal Reserve line which now introduces an age statement to the whisky for the first time — and a shift from gold bag to red. As was the case back in ’08, it remains perhaps the best of the Crown Royal collection, a gentle whisky that is nonetheless packed with character. The nose immediately evokes caramel and vanilla candies, marshmallow fluff, and a mix of cinnamon-spiced apples and pears. The palate is about as easygoing as it gets, evoking gentle vanilla, milk chocolate, apple strudel, and, later, a juicier note of pastry cream. It’s as fresh and sweet and clean as it gets, finishing with a hint of lemon and, curiously, sweetened green tea. Inflation has been very kind to Crown Royal Reserve. It’s gone up in price only $5 in 16 years. 80 proof. A- / $50 [BUY IT NOW FROM CASKERS] [BUY IT NOW FROM TOTAL WINE]
Crown Royal Whisky Sour Cocktail – Black Cherry – This is the only version of Crown Royal’s Whisky Sour Cocktail on the market and, in fact, the only bottled ready-to-serve product it makes. The results are predictable, but not at all bad: sweet, sour, and appropriately whiskified. The black cherry is the only wrinkle here, as there’s rather a lot of it, to the point where it mutes everything else, even the sweetness. The flavor works fine here — and it tastes authentic, as do the lemon juice notes — but there’s just too much of it, making the finish come across like Sucrets. You remember those, right? 46 proof. B / $14 (375ml)
The post Review: Crown Royal 31 Years Old, Reserve 12 Years Old, and Black Cherry Whisky Sour (2024) appeared first on Drinkhacker: The Insider's Guide to Good Drinking.
